McCoy: That shark's been following us ever since the surgeon died, waiting for the burial. Couldn't I have a musket to shoot it, s...ir?Fletcher Christian: Take the deck, McCoy. I'll get the keys to the arms chest.McCoy: Get two muskets, sir. I'd like to shoot that shark on board.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It's a rare parent who can see his or her child clearly and objectively. At a school board meeting I attended . . . the only defin...ition of a gifted child on which everyone in the audience could agree was "mine."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

And so they have left us feeling tired and old.They never cared for school anyway....And they have left us with the things pinned on the bulletin board.And the night, the endless, muggy night that is invading our school.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings whic...h alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Watteau is no less an artist for having painted a fascia board while Sainsbury's is no less effective a business for producing adv...ertisements which entertain and educate instead of condescending and exploiting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

What sunk me very low was the sensation that I was precisely as when in wretched low spirits thirty years ago, without any additio...n to my character from my having had the friendship of Dr. Johnson and many eminent men, made the tour of Europe, and Corsica in particular, and written two very successful books. I was as a board on which fine figures had been painted, but which some corrosive application had reduced to its original nakedness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly... futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Burke and Adams had much in common. Adams read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry, for example, as part of his preparation for life and... a career. Burke--who had sympathized with the American Revolution--after all, the patriots were only seeking their rights as Englishmen--became the avowed enemy of the French Revolution. Adams for his part was not only a thinker, he was a doer: a daring patriot, diplomat, vice-president and president. Yet he never abandoned the life of the mind, as his discourse against the French Revolution attests. Burke and Adams had their similar views on events because they each saw man as disposed to selfishness, requiring public institutions to which civic allegiance is owed to restrain those ignoble instincts so that the virtuous side of people would have a chance to flourish. It was, oddly, an optimism based on a pessimistic estimate of human nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »